There are two things going on with this book, one I loved, the other I just found meh.
The good thing is the main case. It’s a Knives Out esque Rich People Being Bad tale playing out on a storm swept island. I liked the way our heroine, Det. Shana Merchant navigated between the good, bad, and ugly of this family, while Tessa Wegert impressively for a rookie effort did a good job peeling back the layers to get to the conclusion. 99% of the time, the conclusion was a let down for me and this one was no exception but I still enjoyed watching it play out. And I liked the way Merchant used deductive logic without being a Smartass Sherlock type.
The meh part is the larger story with Shana, her background in the NYPD, a serial killer based in New York that is also from her hometown in Vermont (???) and her odd relationship with her fiancee, all of this sacrificed real character development as Wegert clearly wants to set this up for more sequels. Now I don’t mind building on a larger mythology, after all, Ace Atkins does this to perfection with the Quinn Colson series. But it’s how she chooses it and how the flashbacks and references to the past cut into the momentum of what was already an exciting storyline.
So again, great debut, not a fan of the other stuff, will have to read the rest to see how it pays off. But I will read the next one for sure.